Iron Knuckles DC-9-30

By Andrew Herd (23 December 2002)

hen Douglas conceived the idea of a short haul twin jet to complement the DC-8, they can have had little idea of what they had started. Improbable though it may seem, the Boeing 717 can trace its roots directly back to their design, whose classic lines were first drawn in early 1963. Few planes can claim forty years of continuous development.

The DC-9-10's service entry was on December 8th, 1965 and its wheels had barely left the ground before Douglas were tinkering around with the specification - although in fairness, this had never been far from their minds. Right from the start, the basic airframe was designed to be modified, and as demand for hulls soared, the guys went to work with a will. The first stretch stuck another 15 feet on the fuselage to produce the DC-9-30, which sat 105 passengers and went on to become the biggest selling variant. By the time they got around to the DC-9-50, the hull was 30 feet longer than the original and there were seats for 139.

In 1983, McDonnell Douglas renamed the DC-9 the MD-80, which survived an initial period of slow sales to go on to sell over a thousand examples of all its variants. Following the 1997 merger of McDonnell Douglas with Boeing, the MD-95 was renamed the Boeing 717-200; an aircraft which not only is recognisable as a grandchild of the DC-9, but is built in the same Long Beach plant that its ancestor was, all those years ago.

So I guess it is appropriate that Flight One Software has chosen the DC-9-30 to launch its new 'Iron Knuckles' series. According to Flight1, the inspiration behind Iron Knuckles is to let users '...experience what it was like to fly a commercial jet aircraft before the era of glass cockpits and modern flight management systems. Iron Knuckles transports you to a time when commercial pilots navigated their aircraft through complex procedures and situations that relied on analog gauges, extreme discipline and hard math in order to arrive safely to their destination.' ...I think that means that there will be no Flight Management Computers - because these planes came from the era when commercial pilots were trained to look out the windows without hyperventilating.

The DC-9 has a special place in many older ATPLs' hearts because it was near enough the last airliner that was fun to fly. From the start it was designed for two pilot operation; at a time when three man crews were the rule - with this in mind, all the flight operation system items were shown on the annunciator panel, smack in the pilots' forward field of view. Though the ergonomics seem poor compared to modern aircraft, they were advanced for their day and the electrical, hydraulic, fuel, air conditioning and pressurization systems are relatively simple and easy to troubleshoot. But it wasn't a novice's aircraft; flying the DC-9 required a high level of concentration, because it could be very unforgiving if the plane got ahead of the pilot. A good example of the way the aircraft could bite back was its poor handling on ice or wet runways (something which FS2002 fortunately doesn't support) and though it handled well through most of the flight envelope, few pilots could consistently grease landings.

The Iron Knuckles DC-9-30 is for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 only and costs $24.95 by download from Flight1's web site. The download is 47 Mb, which the server handled easily - the publisher emails a key on purchase, which is used in an on-line verification process during the installation. There is also an update/patch, which I applied before I reviewed the package. The installation went without a hitch, leaving me with a new program group containing links to the documentation, the Text-o-Matic utility and the LoadManager program. In addition to four variants of the 30 series, the installation includes six liveries - but more are already beginning to appear on FlightSim.Com, like the TWA paint in the shot above.

Text-o-Matic is FlightOne's proprietary aircraft repainting utility: what it does is to allow you to download and install additional aircraft paint schemes without having to understand anything about aircraft config files. The utility has proven extremely popular and has already been used in at least four other packages I can recall - its only gotcha being that it is possible to apply a template to the wrong aircraft, given that all the templates live in a single folder. I should know - I have done it. Curiously the results are not so bad, my experiments with an Italiana DC-9 livery and the DreamFleet 177 producing some intriguing, if unconventional results. Who knows? Applying the wrong liveries to planes may yet catch on. Anyway, all I am trying to say here is that Text-o-Matic has become a victim of its own success and that maybe it is time to introduce a point upgrade which makes it easier for users to work out which template belongs to which plane.

The other utility is LoadManager. I guess you won't be surprised to hear that this lets you adjust the passenger and cargo load, though I suspect most users will fire it up one time and then forget all about it. However, it does allow you to calculate weight, fuel capacity and takeoff run, which saves those embarassing moments when you have to chop the throttles, slam on the brakes and ask the passengers to draw lots for who gets off before the next attempt. In addition, LoadManager lets you choose whether the FS2002 GPS is in the panel (do you really use one of those?) and lets you turn off system failures and alarms - for your first flight, I suggest you do exactly that, or you will end up hating this sim enough to get really hooked on it.

The documentation is extensive and comes in the form of five PDFs, accessed through the start menu. You get a history of the DC-9; a LoadManager readme; a pilot's operating handbook; a quick startup manual; and a Text-o-Matic crib; so nothing is left to chance. Since the POH is 74 pages long, I suggest you begin with the Quick Start guide - and read it all, even the bit on cabin pressurisation. Yes, I know that virtual passengers don't care - but on the Iron Knuckles DC-9 they do, and furthermore they can get you via the Master Warning Light.

I bet, until now, you were wondering what ATPLs did before FMCs? You were, weren't you? Go on, you might as well admit it. Well, I wasn't sure either. But now we know - they had to fool around with cabin pressurisation, or failing that, explain the bad news to the baggage carousel staff. What the Iron Knuckles DC-9 has you do is dial in your climb rate plus a thousand feet and set your cruise altitude on the way up... and of course you have to depressurise it on the way down, or the doors tend to open kind of quick and the stewardesses won't bring you the normal post flight cup of coffee.

By now you will have gotten the idea that I enjoyed reviewing this sim and although it definitely isn't perfect, it has a certain character that is lacking in more modern airliner addons. Terry Gaff's visual model is very clean, with some exceptionally neat animation of the doors and air stairs, as well as the leading edge slats, flaps and reverse thrust buckets. Full reflective textures are available and the liveries are well executed, although for some reason, virtually all of them have a 'spine' on the very top of the fuselage where some color bleed occurs. This affects third-party liveries as well and has to be a problem with the template.

The VC belongs to what I guess we are going to have to call the 'passive' variety, now that Wilco have released their 737 with its mouse sensitive panel - on the DC9, in common with every other FS2002 3D cockpit prior to Wilco's, you have to rely on elements of the 2D panel to adjust anything.

As the screen shot shows, the DC-9 3D panel looks the part, but none of the engine gauges work and the overall quality is slightly disappointing. If you load the default pilot's view, the glareshield appears rather blocky and you have to pan right down to see the instruments.

You don't get a virtual cabin. Whether this is a plus or minus point depends on your point of view and I have mixed feelings on the subject. While it is nice to know that you can turn around and take a virtual trip down the aisle - Lago's Twotter has come under withering fire for omitting the cabin - the only time I ever do it is to get screen shots for reviews. Okay, perhaps there are people out there whose sole aim in life is to set the bird up on the AP and then retire to the cabin in order to enjoy the view, but somehow I doubt it; besides, it is pretty lonely back there, virtual cabins traditionally being completely devoid of passengers and trolley girls. So while on the one hand there is definitely an issue about whether one should expect a virtual cabin in every FS2002 add-on, on the other, leaving them out saves on frames. Personally, I think that any plane which lacks a cockpit door should have a 3D cabin, which includes almost all GA planes, but I am not bothered if jets don't have 'em. Your call.

Steve Small's flight model definitely has the correct feel to it; stable, but flyable; which makes the aircraft great to fly on approach, something I am sure all the commercial fans out there will appreciate. Given the vast range of control setups out there and the limitations of FS2002, the best you can usually hope for is an approximation to reality, but the DC-9 climbs on the numbers and adheres to all the other data I checked, so it ought to be good. The dynamics convey the feeling that this is a powerful plane, which underlines the fact that it is essential (as ever) to pay attention to flap settings and airspeed on approach - try doing shooting an ILS with full tanks and load and you will see the problem. Careful throttle management is the key: DC-9 crews typically captured the localiser at around 200 kias and flaps 5, aiming to intercept the glide slope from below before they reached the outer marker with flaps 15-20 set, at 160 kias; then, after crossing the OM, they would slowly extend the flaps to 40 degrees and let the airspeed decay back to 125-130 knots, depending on configuration, holding this right to the flare. In some cases flaps 50 were used, but noise abatement regs prevented this at many airports. Getting this right in the Iron Knuckles plane takes a a certain amount of practice, but it is very rewarding when everything goes just right and you grease one.

The 2D panel, though, is something else - looking at the credits most of the programming was done by Tim Dickens. FlightOne are quickly gathering a reputation for building add-ons that really make you feel as if you are there and this one is no exception. This is one of the first aircraft I have encountered after the PIC 767 where it is necessary to understand the overhead as well as the tin up front - because if you don't, that little yellow light up there is gonna be shouting at you all the way through the flight. You can't just ignore it, because the red one will join in too. This is where the Iron Knuckles bit comes in; you will need them to tame the switch sets up there on the roof.

The good news is that there isn't anything terribly complicated about flying the plane and if you really want an easy time, you can switch off all the warnings using LoadManager, with the result that it won't need that much more skill to fly an approach than would in the Lear. But if you want to fly it properly, then there is a lot of fun to be had - just learn to love the checklists that are found at the front of the POH. You definitely need to be an authority on the pressurization selector switch and the pressurization outflow valve, if nothing else (-:

Bearing in mind the vintage of the aircraft, you will have to learn to live without certain refinements. Simmers who won't get out of bed unless their transport has a mode control panel need not apply, because there you won't find anything like that. Though it was a model setup for its time, by modern standards, the DC-9-30 panel is an ergonomic nightmare. Rumor has it that the engineers ran a competition to see just how far apart they could place the autopilot controls without making it totally impossible to operate the system and in my opinion they pretty much succeeded. Switch sets are gleefully scattered all over the cockpit and doing even the simplest thing needs three hands. The last piece of software I saw that shared the same ethos was WordPerfect for DOS and look how well that did. I still remember how underlining text needed eleven fingers and a knee to press the keyboard selection. Well the DC-9 panel uses the same system, with a few extra refinements thrown in by those nice people from the Spanish Inquisition - they designed the autothrottles.

The flight instruments will be familiar to anyone who has used the King Air, because they are a resolutely analog, steam driven set of a type that has served in countless thousands of planes; the only refinements being a radio altimeter and an RMI. The latter shows VOR2 and the ADF and it isn't selectable. As usual, Jim Rhoads at FlightOne has brought a pilot's perspective to the design of the panel and an expanded version of the flight instruments available as shown above left - this is vital for takeoffs and landings and I found myself using it most of the time I had the sim under manual control. This is almost the best feature of the sim, because not only are the gauge graphics drop dead gorgeous but the flight director is mode selectable and works the way it should. Not many FDs do this and few instrument sets looks so good.

The radios are a period set: two COM units, two NAV units, an ADF and a transponder. You also get a set of audio selectors, test and on/off switches, although the latter don't seem to do anything. The radio panel holds the guts of what passes for the autopilot and autothrottle speed control - note that the latter doesn't go below Mach 0.5, so get used to handling the throttles on climbout and approach. The autopilot has all the standard modes although I couldn't get it to select a back course and it tended to hunt on NAV and localiser intercepts.

Taking a quick look left and right shows that the developers have taken the decision to use VC views laterally in the 2D cockpit rather than additional 2D views, which has the virtue of speeding up load times. Personally, I do like the crispness of a photographic 2D view, rather than the hand drawn images that VCs are necessarily restricted to, but all design is a compromise and you get faster loading times by way of compensation. Then, if you look up...

OK, don't panic now. Yeah, there are a lot of switches and stuff up there. NO, DON'T TOUCH THAT ONE! YOU HAVEN'T READ THE MANUAL! Wow, that was close... Look, just leave the environment master switch alone, right? Select the undercarriage up or whatever, but DO NOT touch that one, that's all. But ain't it a peach? Take a look at all those switches.

The overhead on the DC-9 is a masterpiece, there is no other word for it. Everything up there works and once you master the electrical system designers' screwy logic, it doesn't take so long to get the hang of it. When you load the plane, almost every light on the annunciator panel will be on and there is a weird kind of satisfaction watching them go out one by one as you deal with all the systems. It doesn't end there, of course, because you have to play around with the settings in different stages of flight, so the sim brings a definite feeling of actually being there - which is what flight simulation is all about. Right now I am trying to teach the sim that I haven't got a bad attitude, which is what the guidance system annunciator is telling me. Well you can't please them all, can you?

There are things about the DC-9 that could do with improvement, like those texture bleeds and the VC, but overall it is a well-balanced sim and has a great sound set thanks to Mike Hambly. When it comes down to it, the package isn't the best thing that FlightOne have ever done, though I had fun with it, because it is a good choice of plane and the 2D panel is fun to use.

It is no secret that Jim Rhoads is working on a Piper Meridian project and judging from the screen shots on their web site that one looks absolutely stunning - but big iron fans might think about starting their Iron Knuckles collection with the DC-9. If it sells well enough, who knows? We might get an upgrade featuring one of the stretched versions.

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